Three Cheers for President Flyburn

The first time I knew I wanted to be a writer, I was a fifth grader in Detroit and had just written an obituary for a fly named President Flyburn. He was the well-loved, charismatic, not so bright leader of an insect country who died atop a pile of poop. His constituents were devastated and threw a huge celebration in his honor. Since then, not much has changed in way of my sense of humor, but I am a semi-functioning adult living in New York, looking to make that fifth grade writer proud.

My seventh grade self took a pretty good shot at it and wrote a knock-out, drag-out novel titled Midnight’s Kiss that followed Nessa, a high school junior, simultaneously running from and hunting down her murderous father while trying to be just a normal teenager. My friends read it chapter by chapter, addicted to every twist and turn. At the end, both Nessa and I were satisfied with our accomplishments. If I were to read the novel back, I’m sure it would be a heap of trash like any rough draft, but I’ll never have to do that because I wrote all copies of it on looseleaf paper in erasable pen that I’ve since lost to the black hole that is my adolescent bedroom.

Manuscripts may not burn, but they sure do get misplaced.

After a stint of writing bad poetry in high school, I didn’t complete anything else until a novella I wrote freshman year of college called The Five People You Didn’t See Coming about Judson, a guy on the brink of ending his own life, who is Christmas Carolled by a talking brown and white rabbit with an affinity towards trench coats, cigars, and swear words. Instead of past, present, and future, Judson only went back to see all the messed up people from his past in an attempt to find the silver lining in all of it. This time I saved my work on a spotty flash drive and Urbis. If you’re familiar with spotty flash drives and the fall of Urbis, then you can guess that I’m currently not in possession of this story either.

Manuscripts many not burn, but they also get lost when a website suddenly disappears overnight.

And that’s it. That’s all I have to show for a lifelong aspiration of being a writer. Sure there were some short stories and flash fiction thrown into the mix, but, as I’m sure you’re starting to gather, my storage habits were less than stellar.

Even when I did finally learn to store my writing in multiple places, I couldn’t get the hang of actually finishing a piece. I’ve started and stopped trying to write the same novel (Project Wolf) the past three NaNoWriMos. No matter how much planning, how many tarot readings, and just writing one sentence a day I manage, I can’t finish it.

So what’s my solution to my many writing problems? I’m taking them to the blogosphere!

I now officially dedicate this blog to the journey and struggles of making my fifth grade self proud and finally getting some writing done and saved correctly. Come join me.